The closing of Special Dimensions had hurt a lot of people, not just me. I have special skills, so freelance work is easier to come by. Just being a Nano-factory helped see to that, but Sally, my trainer, and Paul, my lumpy tech assistant, were still at loose ends. So, I was spending a lot of online time looking for some kind of situation that could get us all back in business.

I had plenty of cash banked, since I am very low maintenance. At 12 angstroms long, I don't take up a lot of room or resources. But today I was at the cafe, driving my six foot human-form Waldo, checking the local rag.

The classifieds weren't any help, and the rest of the daily paper was mostly full of gloomy financial forecasts, sales ads and the latest breaking news on the "Mad Bomber" incidents that had been cropping up around the city.

I checked the power status on the Waldo. It was OK, but I would have to get it recharged pretty soon. Traffic waltzed by the small Internet cafe, like peoples' lives were not being hurt by the recession.

I don't drink coffee, obviously, nor did I need the Wi-Fi connections the cafe provided, but sitting out front, a cold cup of Java on the little table, gave me a feeling of connection to the world, missing from my network life.

I was on my way to see if Richie had any work coming up that might keep us all busy. Richie Wander's little P.I. Agency would be a long-shot, but I hadn't graced him with my magnificence for a while, and heck, you never know. A black and white pooch ambled along the sidewalks, coming my way. A quick scan identified it as Blackie, one of those Vox Cannis mutations they started gene-jacking back twenty years or so ago.

Once the talking dog fad had cooled down, mongrels like Blackie started showing up on the streets, like a new class of hobo. Wander and I had used him before during the cube caper. It was pretty hard to be anywhere on the mutt's turf, and not run into him sooner or later. A thread of, I would have to call it compassion, ran through me for the animal, both of us being "on the streets" so to speak.

Blackie's head swung up to stare at me, tilting at a forty-five degree angle. A back leg motored against his flank vigorously, evicting some lower level life-forms. He trotted over, pressing a black nose into my waldo's clean socks.

"Dog-toy man. Mic. Know Dog-toy man. Meat? Got meat for Blackie?"

Somethings never change. The hound was a mooch. He couldn't quite wrap his mind around the concept of my waldo not having an animal smell, so I was Dog-toy man, or Mic, depending on where his nose was at the time.

"Hey fella, how's street life? Seen Richie?"

"Good Richie. Like Richie. Richie gone to see Marcia. Blackie got meat for Mic. Need Mic. Like Mic. Mic help Blackie?"

Well, that was a change. I wasn't quite sure what the dog was on about. "Eh? You want my help? With what?"

Binkie gone. Goldie gone. Robbie gone. All gone. Friends all gone. Find for Blackie?

It was like conversing with a vending machine, but I finally got the gist of what was troubling the mutt.

Seems there is a street community of vox doggies. Strays that survive by running messages and such for food, getting by day to day around the city, ducking dog catchers, and keeping each other company. About a week ago, they had all started disappearing. Blackie missed their scent from his little world, and was worried. The short of it was, he wanted the problem looked into. I did a knee-jerk search of civic records for animal captures, but found no increase in stats for this part of the city.

Literary references to "strange disappearances" started to queue up in my memory stack though, and my excitement grew.

"Hah!" I elocuted, startling the few other cafe patrons. "My first non-human case! The game's afoot! Fear not, Blackie, I will look into these dastardly disappearances, this vortex of vanishings for you! M.I.C.A.I.N. is on the job!. We shall collect my associates and solvate your conundrum!"

"Find Binkie?"

"Find Binkie, indeed. We're off!"

I followed Blackie around the corner into an access drive. He huffed and nosed around behind a box, pulling out what looked to be a half package of hot dogs, which he laid at my feet. I eyed the package speculatively, wondering how I might convince Sally and Paul to work for room temperature lunch meats.

#

"You what!" Sally squinted at me over the golden chain still trustfully securing her apartment door to its frame. "Have you lost your marbles? What makes you think I'd be interested in helping you find some stray dogs? Who's the client?"

My response got the door slammed shut, for some reason, so I re-rang her bell, a few times. It eventually reopened. Sally's face reappeared, brown brows knit, an unusually tight pucker decorating her lips. Perhaps it was my approach. I began again.

"That's a very decorative shower cap you have on, especially those little pink flowers..."

Sally sighed "You're not going away, are you. All right. Come in and tell me about it."

I explained the case, worrying a little over all the eye rolling Sally was experiencing. Certainly couldn't be because of something I said, right? I hoped she hadn't contracted some biological disorder, but kept that concern to myself, for the time being. Eventually her eyes settled down into that particular expression I have come to call a sly squint.

"If I decide to help you with this, you'll pay me a standard rate just like I would estimate for Special Dimensions work?"

I internally reviewed some of her past quotes and accessed my account information.

"Sure, mostly, not for my own services or Paul's, of course."

"You dragged Paul into this?"

"Well,"I admitted, "Not yet, but I am sure he could use the work too. Next stop."

Sally snorted. "Okay, big shot. Go talk to Paul, I'll have some numbers for you when you get back. Dog disappearances. For God's sake, Mic".

"Your fuzzy slippers really go well with the shower cap, did I mention that?"

"Go away, Mic."

#

Paul's residence was an urban two story with some nice roses, just a shade darker than the brick front of it. A rather large older woman answered my knock, a little taller than me, with a fluffy middle, but arms like a weightlifter. A little negotiating reluctantly produced Paul for me.

"I dunno, Mic. Mom's got me busy cleaning the basement. We're gonna take on boarders!" he announced brightly. "You'll have to talk to Mom."

Figures. Paul, for all his being twenty years old, still calls Sally "Miss Holt", and defers to his mother regularly. Still, he's a whiz with electronics. For me, somebody who does what he is told is a good thing. My "real" hands measure in angstrom units, or less.

A little negotiation with "Mom" got me approval to employ Paul, and I got talked into renting the residence garage as an office, for a little extra, at least for a month. I had to settle up in advance though for the garage rental. All for a good cause, I guess. I texted Sally, who flatly refused to work out of a garage and pointed out she had better internet access from her apartment. Her rates were...acceptable, so team gathered, I set off to find Blackie.

"First thing, Blackie, I want to see where these friends of yours hung out. Where they might have been when they disappeared."

I followed the mongrel over to D.C.'s lounge, a old haunt of Richie Wander's. Blackie whined, and loped off towards the rear alley of the place. It was backed by a fence, where a dumpster squatted and where the owner of D.C.'s "stored" old pieces of stainless counter top. One leaned against the fence forming a sort of shelter, I guess, if you were dog sized. Blackie seemed to think so because he trotted in and out of the formed gap several times in an agitated state of doggie worry.

A peek inside showed a worn woolly blanket and a bowl of sorts.

"Binkie," gruffed my client.

I switched optical filters through UV into the Infra-red but saw nothing definitive. There were a number of shoe leather traces around, various tire tracks, but nothing that indicated more than wrestling trash out to a dumpster or consequent pick-ups would make.

"You smell anything?"

Blackie pricked up his ears and furrowed the ground around the site.

"Binkie smells, man smells, food, flowers."

Flowers? There was absolutely nothing growing in the alley save a little scrub-grass. I supposed the restaurant might have toted some old table decorations out with the trash, but I didn't recall the tables in D.C.'s being accoutered with anything but ketchup bottles and adverts for some brand of greasy cheese sticks they hustled. Possibly something they thought might offset the other bowel loosening fare they provided. I live off direct current, so that's a guess. Food in Blackie's world, would be just about everything else they carted out.

Paul, quiet so far, wristed his watch up before his face as if it were hard to see. This was unlikely, as Paul's watch is one of those cheap Swiss-army concoctions the size of an Italian tomato. A beatific serenity washed over him. "Almost noon," he pontificated, "lunchtime." His gaze wandered meaningfully in the direction of D.C.'s.

A sort of canine sneeze echoed up from the vicinity of my kneecaps. I took that to be an affirmation. It wouldn't hurt to ask inside after any odd doings, so I led my caravan of cohorts around front, and leaving Blackie there, took Paul inside.

The bartender was rubbing a fine oily sheen on the glassware with a contemptibly soiled rag. We ordered right at the bar proper. "Ham san'wich," drooled Paul.

I asked to buy the rag, intending to touch up a few drying ball joints later but was denied, so settled on acquiring a rasher of bacon for Blackie.

"Any odd noises from around back lately?"

The bar-guy gave me a suspicious look. "Whatdaya mean by that? "

"Just asking. Never mind." I suppose it wasn't something that would be noticed casually anyway. I only thought to ask because of the opportunity.

Once Paul had emptied his dish, we went back out, where I fed the other animal.

The next stop turned out to be in the manufacturing district, behind a battleship-gray masonry wall. Here, wood pallets loomed in questionable towers and the Dumpsters were manifold. Blackie vacuumed the alleyway with his nose, and gustily thrust his head into a narrow gap in the pallet stacks.

"Robbie and man smell, same man. Flowers. No food." reported Blackie.

Robbie? Oh, the other dog. "Same man? As in one of the same you sniffed behind D.C.'s?"

"Same."

That was a break, of sorts. I thought for a few millicycles. "Flowers again? The same kind of flowers?"

"Same."

"You know what kind of posies they were?"

This netted me another ninety degree visual inspection from the dog, and a better view of the insides of Blackies ears.

"If I take you to a flower shop, could you show me?"

"Show dog-toy man. No problem," Blackie gruffed proudly. I noticed some tire tracks pealed off from the alley through a chain link gate and on into the factory's back lot. Didn't look like dump truck tires either.

Taking note of the street address painted on the dumpsters, I called Sally.

"Hey lady."

"Well, if it isn't the leader of the pack. Need something?"

"I'm interested in a business operating out of a leased factory. The number I got off the net only connects to the building owner, so I need you to call the shop's occupants. See if you can find out what they do there."

"Kind of roundabout approach, don't you think? Why can't you just go pound on the door, Mic?"

"Busy. Going to see a man about a dog, eh, a flower, sort of. Anyway, Don't want to unveil my grandeur until I straighten something out. Just do your usual sales call thing. Pretend you're trying to drum up business - offer a real good rate. Sniff 'em out, so to speak."

"Funny, Mic. Okay, call me when you're ready."

There was a florist on third. Getting Blackie inside for a good sniff would be the real problem. I stopped at a variety store on the way to pickup a pair of sunglasses, dog harness, a cane, and a small can of white spray paint. Soon, blind Mic and his trusty rover were tapping their way into the flower emporium.

There were flower arrangements all over, but most of the stock was on display behind the counter. I could hardly march Blackie around the register to smell the roses, so to speak. A ploy came to mind.

"Some help here," I whined, rattling wildly about with the cane. I managed to connect with several decorative pots on the floor, sending one scooting off into a corner. A freckle faced boy in horn-rims scuttled out from behind the counter, looked alternately at the merchandise, me, and the hyperactive stick.

"Yessir? What. . ."

I managed to poke the cane into one of the pots, pretended to stumble and dropped the leash. Blackie took off to poke his schnoz into things behind the counter as I recovered my feet. This seemed to attract the clerks attention overmuch, so I lifted the cane and pot over my head and look confused. The clerk shot both hands up toward the pot.

"Garcon!" I pronounce, "I shall have the soup Du Jour!" I emphasized this with a poke upwards with the stick. The pot sailed up and the clerk made a miraculous save, then carefully put the pot to one side.

"I am sorry sir, "he huffed, "This is a flower shop. The restaurant is next door. Wait, I'll get your dog for you."

Blackie tractably complied, managing to keep a few lilacs chomped firmly in his jaw.

I apologized profusely, paid for the flowers, and let the nice young man escort me to the street.

Lilac, then. Blackie had smelled lilac in both locations. I buzzed Sally, to see what progress she'd made.

The building was rented out to a firm called Chem Co.

"Did you get a hold of anyone at the building?"

"Eventually. They were oddly reticent about divulging their products. I wrangled you an appointment anyway though."

I could almost see a triumphant smirk.

"Never dealt with any company that didn't have something they wanted fixed. It's always just a matter of price, in the end."

I waited for her nail buffing to wind down. "And?"

"Two O clock. Don't be late. They have a machine that visually orients, then trims off excess plastic from the molded parts. They want that deflashing system looked at. A simple optical recognition problem, sounds like."

That meant I'd need to decant from the Waldo at some point, so Paul would have to go along, but definitely Blackie would need to stay away. I can control the Waldo remotely, though clumsily, from outside it, but not well enough to fool anybody. I couldn't depend on Paul to fast-talk people at the plant either, so this was going to take some thinking.

I did some jawing with Sally, sketching in my new plan. She reluctantly agreed to meet us at the plant's office. I sent Blackie off to his usual haunts.

Paul ran in to the variety store for me and purchased some machine gray spray paint, then we reconvened back behind the factory with time to spare before our appointment.

I stripped the waldo down to undershorts, and had Paul spray the waldo a nice uniform factory gray. Shorts and all. He undocked me from it and re-injected me into my field carrier, a sort of lunchbox affair usually used to tote nano-tools like me around. Piloting the waldo remotely, I shambled it along with us as we made for our meeting with Sally in front of the factory.

Sally did all the talking.

"My assistant," she nodded at Paul, "will tend to the deflashing unit, and I have brought a waldo to continue the trimming process while it's off-line, so you wont have to stop production during repair."

The manager was heavy, black browed and swarthy. He eyed the three of us with suspicion. More importantly, he smelled of lilac aftershave.

"Jou mus' whork queekly, and cannot be any runink around in here. Safety reasons. I weel have a cuttink table set up in the line for jour Waldo."

That was about it for socializing. The guy turned around and waved us after him, moving with little more grace than my remote controlled waldo showed.

The plant was noisy, but oddly barren, based on my experience. There seemed to be only one product line, where molded straps moved along a belt to the deflashing station. The straps looked suspiciously like dog collars, with little lumps molded into them. I had my waldo palm one from off the line.

The station oriented and jigged the straps so that automated tools could remove mold excess from them. I set up the simple program required in the waldo to substitute for the machine's purpose, while Paul decanted me into the vision system processor.

I scanned the factory through the vision cameras in Paul's earpiece and on the transport case. There was a small pile of incoming product crates on the shipping bay, and off to one side, a smaller, unmarked outgoing one. Behind this, an unpainted, freestanding drywall construction stood,like a temporary room, or mini-house built on the factory floor. One door decorated it, no windows.

As long as I was in the deflasher's vision module, I ran a quick diagnostic. A couple of grimy beam-splitters were the problem, Paul could buff them easily while I attended to other things.

One thing, these automated lines, while post-dumb, did connect to several system computers, which in turn, connected to the general plant's network.

A little sleight of hand got me into the engineering CAD files, and other systems. Interesting. They were dog collars, like those used to keep animals invisibly fenced to a defined area, complete with shock dispensers and other radio activated functions, like links to embedded detonators for the molecular grade explosive plastic they turned out to be made from. I wonder what the animal rights people would say.

The plastic, according to my net search, remained inert until modified by a certain frequency, but still not something I would want my pet to wear. Blowing up Rover for ill behavior seemed a little extreme, not to mention the damage to the neighborhood the stuff could cause.

I dug back into the system. There should be at least data on the detonator...ah whatdaya know, a central broadcaster, and right here too. I wondered where these things were being shipped to. Shipping and receiving records said no place yet, the nasty collars were all still on the dock... in the lone outgoing crate. Okay. I crushed the transmitter module on the collar the waldo had palmed.

Paul, you can get me out of here. You just need to clean up and polish the optics.

While Paul tended to this, I accessed the video pickups in my transport case. Flicking through to the infra-red, I scanned the little free-standing room. A number of small heat-blushes showed up. Could be from machine heat, but these moved around a little, and were about the size I expected to find.

Give Sally your earpiece.

"Okay Mic."

Then put me back in the waldo.

"The waldo?"

Yeah, you know, the big gray thing. My waldo. After that, take a hike. I'll meet you outside.

"You sure Mic?"

Outside. Way outside.

"Okay Mic."

A little later, and Sally was on line.

"So now what, Mic?"

Did you get paid yet?

Sally humphed. "Nobody pays in advance any more. Got a fifty percent deposit on the work, though."

That's my girl. Cash it, my advice. Tell Mr. thick accent you have to drive Paul back for a part, whatever. Get out of the building. Don't count on billing the client for the balance.

"Mic. . ."

Get gone, Sally. Hurry.

I waited till my crew left, then jerked upright and made a run for the little room. I didn't bother with the door, just made the waldo blow right through the wall. A row of dog cages were inside, and with shouts and invective close behind, I made quick work opening the cages. I noted with relief that none of the dogs wore collars.

"Outside quick, everybody! Use the shipping dock!"

Only some of the animals seemed to understand, but all of 'em took off out of pack instinct and made for the dock anyway.

Guns were now firing, and a lucky shot could do real damage, so I followed my own advice, and ran for it.

I was still running down the concrete ramp into the yard when I sent a signal to their plant's prototype transmitter. An explosion ripped like a hurricane up behind me, and I was blown into the air like shot from a cannon, despite the waldo's weight.

We made the news again, obviously. The investigations revealed that a ring of saboteurs had planned using the stray dogs to blow up government buildings all through the city. Sally was not reticent before camera, and she saw to it we got incorporated immediately, to handle all the job offers that publicity poured our way. Best of all, Blackie's friends got away clean.

Micain Investigations and electronic repair, Ltd. Has a nice ring to it, don't you think?

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